A travel industry veteran is to launch a new luxury brand, four years after setting up a successful homeworking company.
Lucy Clarke founded Travology Travel in 2020, bringing more than two decades of experience in both high street and online travel agencies to the remote business. Having gotten her start as a sales consultant for Going Places and Thomas Cook, she went on to work for ITC Travel Group as a team leader before joining Protected Trust Services as a relationships manager.
Today, Clarke’s independent travel agency is best known for selling premium holidays with a bespoke touch, and comprises a team of 18 employees based across the UK. These self-employed advisors, or “travel planners”, earn up to 75% of the commission from each booking and specialise in a variety of destinations.
While Clarke says business at Travology Travel is “going amazing”, she believes it’s time to dedicate a brand that exclusively designs higher-end trips.
“I saw a gap in the market for homeworkers that just want to concentrate on the high-end, and not have the association with affordable luxury,” she tells TTG Luxury. “A five-star Iberostar hotel doesn’t fit on the same page as a Silversea cruise. It’s a different level, so it needs a different brand.”
Called ‘Opulenta’, the new agency will focus solely on luxury travel - a market that is predicted to double in value by 2034. Clarke’s team will start small, with just one planner from Travology moving over to the spin-off business.
“At the moment, I’m only envisaging one or two advisors on the luxury brand, with an aim of five people, for the time being,” she says. “That would be a nice number to manage and keep on top of it all.”
The recruitment process has yet to begin, but Clarke insists the criteria for becoming an Opulenta travel planner will be strict.
“We’re going to be really careful with who joins,” she says. “It’s going to be a bespoke service and they need to be used to selling bespoke holidays. They need to know so much – the product, where to send clients, who to book it with, all the suppliers. And then it’s looking after them during the trip.”
At first glance, Opulenta’s Instagram looks completely different from that of its elder sibling. Clarke has created a “richer” aesthetic for the brand with darker colours, including navy with green hues and gold font, in contrast to Travology’s pastel shades of pink and blue. It has also revealed a select number of its partners, including Explora Journeys, Hotel Yountville Resort and Spa in Napa Valley, and One&Only Kea Island.
It wasn’t just a demand for ultra-luxury holidays that inspired Clarke to launch Opulenta, however. A self-described lover of life’s finer things, the Cheshire native has long been passionate about curating extraordinary travel experiences for her clients and believes that this new venture will better enable her to do so.
“Higher budget really helps with the high-end clients,” she says. “It’s so nice being able to plan dream holidays, and not having to mess around for a long time to save a few hundred pounds.”
As well as exceptional properties, Opulenta will offer luxury transfer and concierge services to ensure clients’ journeys are seamless from start to finish. Guests will also have communication access to their travel planner at all the times,
“They [the advisor] need to be the point of contact with the client the whole time,” Clarke says. “There’s no point in them booking a holiday with us, and then going through to a call centre. They need to have a relationship with the advisor. That’s how you make a repeat booking.”
Opulenta is set to launch in mid-October with a product offering that includes iconic hotels such as the Jumeirah Burj Al Arab in Dubai, and featuring brands such as Ritz-Cartlon and One&Only.
